The influence of pressure on the self-assembly of the thick filament from the myosin of vertebrate skeletal muscle.

The thick-filament-monomeric-myosin equilibrium was prepared from pure myosin at pH 8.1. The application of hydrostatic pressure to the self-assembly equilibrium resulted in a biphasic dissociation curve in which a linear decrease in turbidity (a measure of weight added to or lost from the filament) was followed by a transition to a second pressure-insensitive phase. The first phase represents the effect of hydrostatic pressure on the growth or propagation phase of filament assembly. Here is was shown that hydrostatic pressure served to shorten the filaments in concert towards the bare zone whilst maintaining the narrow length distribution seen at atmospheric pressure; the filament concentration remained constant during the experiment. A more precise definition of the delta-v for the assembly of monomer into filament was obtained than had hitherto been possible. The positioning of the bare zone at the centre of the filament seems to be one of the more obvious functions of the length-regulation mechanism. It also appears that all the basic structural elements of the native thick filament are potentially present in the pH 8.1 homopolymer; its length can be increased by physiological concentrations of MgCl2 and decreased by pressure. The monodisperse native filament could then be formed by a fine tuning of the basic length-regulation mechanism of the homopolymer by the co-polymerization of the other thick-filament proteins.